There are so many human foibles that English lacks words to explain, so we English-speakers have to steal them from other languages and italicize them to get by. L’esprit de l’escalier, “the wit of the staircase,” is my favorite from the French: That’s when you’re at a party, someone hits you with a zinger that you have no comeback for, and you don’t think of the perfect rejoinder until you’re walking down the stairs and leaving at the end of the night.
What you see here is several more of these foreign words from Maptia, a website dedicated to sharing global stories. They’ve commissioned an illustrator to explain “11 Untranslatable Words From Other Cultures” that you’re bound to get a kick out of.
I have been struggling with some way to tie this video into industrial design, modelmaking/propmaking, or creative pursuits in general, just so I’d have an excuse to post it. But you know what, it’s a Friday and we Americans are on the verge of a holiday, so I’m going to see if I can sneak this one in while my bosses are hopefully loading their cars up with fishing gear. This is from a TV variety show in Japan, where a non-litigious society combined with focused creativity has turned pranking into an art form.
Probably staged, but does it matter? And how awesome is that costume, human legs aside?
For many of us, keyboards are the most important input device we own. Bloggers, journalist and coders can’t get by with touchscreens. But one programmer, California-based Jeff Atwood, found himself continually dissatisfied with the physical design of every keyboard he used. So he teamed up with WASD Keyboards, a California-based producer of specialty keyboards, to design his own. And it appears to be pretty damned awesome.
Atwood might be a software developer, but he’s got the attention to fine detail of a great industrial designer. His CODE Keyboard addresses every one of his woes with materials, intelligent design and careful thought.
Haptics. Atwood doesn’t like the spongy feel of pressing a plastic key attached to a rubber bubble. Heck, I don’t think any of us do, but he and Kwong actually did something about it. The CODE features mechanical keyswitches with a “solid actuation force.”
Materials. The keyswitches are mounted to a steel backplate “for a rock solid feel.” The keyboard weighs nearly 2.5 pounds.
User Experience. The steel backplate is painted white and the markings on each key are precisely placed to provide completely even LED backlighting. You can choose from seven different backlighting levels or turn it off completely, and the keyboard will remember your preference.
Seoul-based Kim Seongjin was studying Chemical Engineering at Chonnam National University, but dropped out to complete South Korea’s mandatory military service. After two years in the Marines, he went back to school, this time for Industrial Design. We’re glad he made the career switch; we’ve just stumbled across some of the freshly-minted B.I.D.’s concept work, and it shows a promising grasp of the not-always-intersecting areas of graphics, functionality, style and re-use.
Graphics – His Data Pouch was a school project, done in conjunction with LG, to envision portable hard drives from the year 2018. We dig the simple touch of having the drive’s current capacity demonstrated via nature-based images, and the pouring metaphor for transferring data.
Speaking of keys, you needn’t look further than modern-day car key fobs to see what’s coming. But until that day arrives, here’s an odd interstitial technology hovering between the incumbency of metal keys and the inevitable adoption of wireless unlocking devices.
KeyMe is a smartphone app that allows users to “store, share, and duplicate their physical keys using a digital scan that is securely stored in the cloud.” By using the camera on your phone, you can scan your keys. Should you need to make copies of them, the app translates your keys’ dimensions into something a keymaker can reproduce.
It seems so hopelessly primitive to me that we all carry a pocketful of little pieces of metal to gain entry to our homes and workplaces. Side gigs that I’ve had required me to carry as many as fifteen keys including my own, and I hate the pocket bulk. So I’ll happily embrace smartphone-based digital locks when they become widespread (and when my landlord allows them).
In the meantime, one of the most often-used and well-worn objects I own is the multi-keyholder you see above. I purchased it in 1998 in Japan for 2,000 yen (something like twenty bucks back then), and the manufacturer’s mark says “Lexon.”
Design & Operation
The design is brilliant. With your thumb you slide the little nub on the exterior, which is attached to a small spring bolt. That allows the spherical part of the little barbell attached to the individual key rings to slide out of the slit in the perimeter.
While releasing the bolt is easy when you want to do it, in 15 years of daily carrying it’s never once accidentally opened.
We’ve seen some of Jeffrey Stephenson‘s sculptural computer creations before—including a questions and answers to his queries about a PC tower project—but he might just have outdone himself with his latest project. Made from 167 pieces of handcut veneer, “Flightline is made from quilted maple, maple burl, mahogany, lacewood and aircraft grade birch plywood.”
Looks like the folks at Wacom’s skunkworks have been busy. This week they’ve announced not one, but three new products coming out this fall, targeted at three very different types of users.
First up is the toteable Cintiq Companion, a “professional creative tablet” that runs Windows 8. The standalone machine boasts a 1920×1080, 13.3” display, the 2,048 levels of pen pressure you’ve come to expect from Wacom, both front and rear cameras, and a 256 or 512 GB hard drive. This is aimed at the user looking for the all-in-one solution.
The Cintiq Companion Hybrid, meanwhile, is targeted at the user who works primarily off of a desktop machine. The Hybrid has the same screen size (and a seemingly identical form factor) to the Companion, as well as the same dual cameras, but runs Android rather than Windows and features a smaller (16 or 32 GB) hard drive. This is essentially meant to be the tablet you use for your desktop machine, but it can be detached and carried around for light sketching duty.
Like the toaster and the wristwatch, the alarm clock is precisely the sort of everyday household item that has been the subject of countless attempts at reinvention. In fact, the alarm clock is something like a cross between the two, as a tabletop device that features a clock/timer with an at-times arcane interface for various options and settings.
But there’s definitely room for improvement, and a new, soon-to-be-released product by Scottish designers Natalie Duckett and Lee Murray incorporates several innovations in the interest of redesigning the alarm clock. Although it’s name suggests urgency or shock, the Alarming Clock reframes the problem: not only does it emit an audio cue at a specified time, it also does so nine hours in advance to signal the time at which one should consider going to bed. The timeframe is calibrated in order to ensure a full eight hours of slumber, accounting for time to “wind down” prior to bedtime to “help your brain to be less active meaning you are ready for sleep and not continuing to process information.”
Many of us just do not realize how important a regular sleep routine is and often overlook this. There are many gadgets and apps available to monitor how well you are sleeping but none that will help you improve it. Why is it so difficult to get out of bed?… The Alarming Clock is designed to enhance our waking experience by improving our sleep rhythm with the unique feature of an evening alarm.
The concept dates back to 2010, when Duckett—then a student at the University of Dundee, where she met Murray—first developed a “Woodpecker Clock” that was the subject of quite a bit of proverbial buzz. The production version has shed the bark cladding of the split-log aesthetic to make for a more subtle reference to its avian inspiration, but the mechanism remains largely unchanged:
A striking feature of the Alarming Clock is its move away from an electronic buzz. Instead, the alarm signal is mechanically created to imitate the sound of a woodpecker drumming against a tree. Placing the ‘beak’ against different surfaces or objects alters the sound making the alarm signal unique to your home. If an alarm signal is not needed, simply remove the beak and set aside…
When alarm signals jolt you awake this is because you were in a deep sleep and the alarm signal has scared your brain into waking. This is what leaves you feeling groggy and tired throughout the day but when you are awoken from a light sleep, created by your sleep cycle, it is merely a gentle reminder to wake up.
The Dyson vac I use to clean up my dogs’ pet fur is awesome, but one thing about it drives me nuts: It’s made from polycarbonate, so during the vacuuming process the unit itself attracts, through static electricity, pet fur. This requires you to vacuum off the unit itself after you’ve finished vacuuming the floor, and I always asked myself why on Earth they’d selected polycarbonate.
Well, now I know: durability. The frame can withstand some serious abuse, to the tune of a 30-lb. weight being dropped on it. Being made aware of the thinking behind a particular design decision can actually change your perception of that object; while having to vacuum off a vacuum is bothersome, I’d choose minor inconvenience over short lifespan any day.
In this rare and informative look inside Dyson’s R&D facility in Malmesbury, we see their machines being put through the paces—and compared side-by-side with competitors’ models—while Director of Engineering Alex Knox [who we interviewed last year] walks us through specific design features. Aside from the weight-smashing test, it’s neat to see exactly what the designers expect of the machine, from a user standpoint, and the specific solutions they devised to enable those things.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Doesn’t look like any alarm clock I’ve ever seen…
